


Never

by holyfant



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Hogwarts Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-19
Updated: 2012-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-16 00:55:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/533694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holyfant/pseuds/holyfant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was curious, but Lavender continued to live for quite a while, considering her injuries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never

Parvati didn't even see her get carried in. Parvati didn't see anything. 

When she tried to reconstruct it later, she imagined things she could never really know. Things like how it might and probably would have all happened at the same time, how when she saw Voldemort for the first time and fear was a congealed stone in her gut, Lavender's adrenalin was maybe already beginning to fail, and things began to blur before her eyes. How pressing her fingers to her throat and finding no real boundary anymore, having her fingertips come up warm and sticky with blood might have happened at the exact same time when someone, anyone, cried that Harry Potter was dead and Parvati closed her eyes (she remembered this with clarity), thinking in a strange, detached way that she would never see Padma again. How it may have been somewhere around the moment when Harry Potter revealed himself to be, of all things, not dead, _not dead_ , that someone found Lavender and took the trouble to bring her somewhere where it was safer. It might have been around the moment when Neville Longbottom did things that she couldn't see – she was part of a crowd, and the crowd had eyes, and she felt the surges of electric hope running through the protective bubble of people around her, but she never really saw – that Lavender was dragged into the ruin of the Great Hall. She imagined how Lavender might even have smiled at Madam Pomfrey, who would have received her gravely, her trained Healers' eye revealing more things than just blood. She imagined that Madam Pomfrey left her to it after she had been put down somewhere in a relatively comfortable way, knowing that there was really nothing she could do – she probably told Lavender she would be okay, and probably Lavender didn't believe her. Lavender always was intuitive about things. Parvati often wondered who it was that brought Lavender back. Lavender couldn't tell her, like so many other things Lavender could no longer do.

Parvati recalled, with intrusive, uncontrollable, breathtaking sharpness at first and with something more of a softness later, that it took her some time after Voldemort's death to realise she hadn't seen Lavender in a while. She remembered wandering around the rubble of the Entrance Hall, delirious with happiness, hysteria and disorientation, a strange, violent indecision upon her. What eventually made her return to the Great Hall wasn't Lavender, but the thought of finding Padma – and she wasn't really afraid, because if Padma were dead she would have known, she would have felt it. Lavender crossed her mind then but somehow she still wasn't afraid, as if she would have felt that too.

The gates were half opened, one of the huge doors half unhinged. The makeshift hospital was overflowing with activity – there were quite a lot of people crying, some alone, others together. There were also quite a lot of people laughing and this struck her as strange for a minute, before she realised that she, too, was wearing a ridiculous big grin, a grin that hurt her mouth. She stood still for a moment and tried to relax her face but found that she couldn't.

It was Padma who, even while standing with her back to Parvati, noticed her first, who felt the tug at their shared umbilical cord, spun round from the wounded classmate she was poring over and grabbed her into a hug from the side – a sticky hug, full of blood, painful, a hug of bruises. Parvati laughed out loud, too loud, into her sister's ear and felt good, in that moment, felt alright, she would never let go...

But Padma disentangled herself. Her face was wet – sweat, tears, blood – and said, her mouth small (which was something Parvati noticed, one of the details that stood out later, that small mouth smeared with blood that wasn't hers): “Lavender.”

And to say that the ground dropped down from beneath Parvati was the right description, because she didn't need Padma to say anything else, the smallness of her mouth said it all. Padma had to steady her.

“Where?” Parvati said, her voice a croak – she hadn't used it since her final shouted spells and that seemed hours ago, maybe it even was.

Padma pointed her to it, it, her, well, it, there was almost nothing left of Lavender, she was a bundle of girl with a blood-soaked bandage to her neck, blood dripping from the bench she was lying on, a small puddle of it under her head, she was small, she looked like she had disappeared already.

Parvati stepped over bodies, dead, alive, in-between, could barely take enough care to avoid limbs. When she dropped to her knees beside the collapsed bit of human that was Lavender, she felt a hysterical laugh bubbling up from her gut, one that she barely stifled by putting her fist inside her mouth.

Lavender opened her eyes. She was a blur of redness – her beautiful blonde hair was stained by the blood, the blood that ran everywhere, her face was red, there was blood in her lashes. Her eyes were still white and brown and they focused, slowly, on Parvati. She tried to make a sound, it was more of a gurgle, but Parvati recognised her name or at least pretended to recognise it.

There was really nothing Parvati could say. Still, she said it: “Oh Lav,” and she touched her friend. She knew she probably shouldn't, because she couldn't tell where Lavender's wounds ended and where they began, but she couldn't help herself. She laid a hand on Lavender's forehead. Lavender's eyes fluttered close, lashes sticking together. She hummed, a soft, warm sound. Something in her throat gurgled as she did it.

Parvati said: “Don't try to talk, Lav, please,” although she did want Lavender to talk, really. If Lavender had been able to say anything then maybe this wouldn't have felt like such a waste, like such a fucking waste, all of it, why did she have to find Lavender like this only to find her past that boundary where they would find each other already? Why were they here? Why was Lavender here? Why was she not at home, having heeded her father's apprehension about her going back to Hogwarts, waiting for Parvati's letter that would say: 'He's dead, Lav! Fucking Voldemort - we can call him that now, strange, right? - finally kicked the bucket! Harry Potter did great, although no one knows where he's at right now. I don't know, but I don't think we'll be seeing him again soon. What do you say, want to go backpacking through India this summer? Love.' Why couldn't Lavender even tell her what had happened, why had anything even happened at all, why was Lavender here on this bench, bleeding, losing herself, why wasn't it anyone else, anyone else, Parvati herself...

Why couldn't she give meaning to anything?

So because Lavender couldn't do it for her, she started to tell Lavender all of the things that had happened – you fought bravely, Lav, you made a difference, we all did, we helped, it meant something – and along the way it started to be somewhat true, and what had happened to Parvati became the same thing as what had happened to Lavender – I wasn't much use at the end but Neville, Lavender, you should've seen Neville, and then of course Hermione and Ron, we knew they would be great but they were greater, and yeah, Harry, he's like someone you know but don't know, right, you know what I mean, like he's something bigger than all of us even if he doesn't look like it, I haven't seen him, I don't know how he must feel right now, but here we are, we fought, we did what we could, everything is saved. Everything is saved, she repeated.

Lavender even smiled at that. Parvati felt another laugh bubbling up and this time she didn't stop it. Her giggle turned into a guffaw, until her eyes were streaming with tears _from laughter_ , from laughter of all things. Nobody paid her any mind except Lavender, whose smile became wider – Parvati could see the red teeth, the blood filling up her mouth. The tears that were falling from her eyes continued to come even as her laughter died.

“Lav,” she said, something of a calm stealing over her, “you were wonderful.”

Even if she didn't know yet what had happened (and what she would learn later about what happened was horrifying to think about, she imagined the werewolf's poison inside Lavender, trying to keep her alive, to turn her, it must have hurt, and maybe maybe maybe it was good that she was so badly hurt that she could never have lived and somehow this made it better for Parvati even though this thought made her cry) she knew it was true. Lavender was wonderful. She was wonderful in everything, how she had defended their world now, but also always, always, in how she had been Parvati's friend and sometimes lover, more often these final months, how she had never rushed Parvati in those things, how she had quietly waited for Parvati to figure things out, how she had allowed Parvati to be afraid, how everything with Lavender had been right and easy when Parvati managed to forget about outside pressures, how she had been able to understand some things that Parvati never could and still be completely oblivious to others, how she had been in the mornings and the evenings and.

“And you know I love you,” she said. It was a bit different for her to say it to Lavender and not get it back. Lavender was staring at her. Her eyes were large. Again she tried to speak but failed.

“I know,” Parvati said in response, because really, she didn't need to hear it to know it. She knew.

Lavender's eyes closed. Her breathing was laboured, bubbles formed and popped in the corner of her mouth as she struggled to draw breath.

Madam Pomfrey, passing by on the other side of Lavender, looking staunch, bloodied, jaw set, stopped for a moment. “Oh, Parvati,” she said, “I'm so glad you found her. She was asking after you. I gave her something for the pain.” Her face was empty. Parvati looked at her and nodded, and understood that Madam Pomfrey had seen lots of things that day and didn't ask anything else, just nodded, thanks, thanks thanks thanks

When she looked back to Lavender the laboured note in her breathing had lessened, but so had the heaving of her chest. Parvati gently, softly, put her forehead against the side of Lavender's head. She pressed her eyes shut, squeezing tears from between her eyelids that dripped into the blood that was gathering under the bench. She sought Lavender's hand, hanging uselessly from the bench and gripped it, wove her fingers through Lavender's, felt the mixed blood between their palms stick together. Lavender even managed to squeeze back.

She thought of all the things she wanted to say. Like how they would have gone backpacking through India together like Lavender had tentatively asked her once and never again brought up because Parvati still wasn't sure what it all meant. How they would have had a real relationship at one point, one that everyone knew about, one that everyone could see. How that wouldn't have meant that much more for them, per se, but at the same time how it would have because she could see, even in her deepest doubts, that Lavender wanted to be loved openly, in the sun. How they would have lived together. How they would have kissed each other openly, how they would have hurt each other, how they would have fought and then made up and how they would have made love, without secrecy, without having to be afraid. This had all been becoming clear to her in the months before this and she had never said it, and now: that would never be possible again, never never never

She felt Padma's presence behind her even before her sister put her hand on her head. Those pressures, those dual pressures of blood and love, on her hand and on her head, made her cry just a little harder. Later it was impossible to tell how much time passed before Lavender's grip began to lessen, until it was nothing more than a ghost, a hope, and at last, an imagination.

Padma's grip on her head was so tight it was almost painful.

When she let go of Lavender's hand it was already growing cool in her own – or maybe she was just imagining things. She allowed Padma to pull her up – her own legs were barely of any use – and melted into the hug she offered.

“I know,” Padma said into her ear and Parvati wasn't surprised at how many meanings that could have, and for once, didn't wonder, and just clung to her twin's shoulders, turning _never_ over in her head until it was spinning like a coin.


End file.
